Elected Officials Send Open Letter To Jeff Sessions About Marijuana Policy

Below is a letter that was sent by a laundry list of local elected officials from around the country to United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as featured in the Marijuana Moment newsletter:

A new national coalition of local elected officials responded forcefully to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ anti-cannabis policy adopted in early January. The group published a letter to the Attorney General in a full-page ad in the Washington Times on Wednesday, January 31, 2018.

The bipartisan group of roughly 100 local elected officials hailed from 11 states and included a sheriff, lieutenant governor, mayors, councilors, county commissioners, and legislators. Eleven municipal governments also passed resolutions officially co-signing.

If you are an elected official that would like to join our effort, please subscribe to our email list by clicking the below link.

We write as local elected officials from across the United States to share our concern regarding the signal you have sent with your rescission of the Cole Memorandum and related Department of Justice guidance. Local and state governments, including many of ours, have been working under the direction of the Cole Memo since 2013 as our jurisdictions license and enforce cannabis regulations. The Cole Memo outlined important public safety protections while providing clear direction to our jurisdictions.

The policy set forth in the Cole Memo was intended to ensure public safety – that cannabis stays out of the hands of children and not get diverted across state lines. It also directed states to closely monitor cannabis businesses to ensure that unsavory individuals were not operating in the legal marketplace. The guidance documents also provided a path for banking, helping to curtail the public-safety risks of an all-cash industry. Local governments were given the assurance by the Department of Justice that the enforcement of prohibition-era federal cannabis laws would not be prioritized if we followed the directives of the Cole Memo.

Your decision earlier this month to revoke the Cole Memo eliminated these safeguards, which were put in place to protect public safety in our communities. Your decision also created uncertainty for our local governments by leaving federal enforcement decisions up to each individual U.S. Attorney, resulting in what could be selective and unfair enforcement. Of greatest concern, however, is the sheer confusion felt by local officials who now face governing in a chaotic environment. While it may have been the intention to spark uncertainty for legal cannabis license holders across the nation, it also created significant confusion for local governments in thirty-one states and territories where they have comprehensive programs regulating the licensing, land-use, enforcement, and taxation of this industry.

The signatories on this letter have varying opinions about the legalization of cannabis generally. And, for many of us, our views have evolved over time. Ultimately, though, we all agree that we must follow the directive of our citizens; and that states must have the right to chart their own course on cannabis. Americans have gone to the ballot box in states and communities several times supporting legalizing cannabis for medical or adult use. Most recent polling indicates that more than ninety percent of Americans support legalizing medical cannabis; and six in ten, including a majority of both Democratic and Republican respondents, support legalizing cannabis for adult use. Notably, polls have also found that more than seventy percent of Americans want the federal government to respect all state marijuana laws. This nation’s beginnings can be traced to a ragtag bunch of renegades tossing tea into the Boston Harbor because a large distant government wasn’t listening to its populace. In this case, the public wants this decision left up to states and localities. And, similarly, our bottom line is that we believe this is simply a states’ rights issue. Each state should be able to decide for themselves their own policies regarding cannabis.

We do agree with you on one critical item: the discrepancy between state and federal law regarding cannabis is a legitimate concern. To address this concern, we suggest the convening of a bipartisan and bicameral task force to explore aligning federal and state cannabis laws. While this task force is convening, we would request that the Department of Justice not initiate new enforcement actions in situations where operators are following state and local regulations. This would provide certainty to the basic operations of local governments across the country.

We welcome your feedback or questions; and we hope that we can work together to help solve this problem. Solving problems is exactly what local governments are doing across this country every day.

Johnny Green is a cannabis activist from Oregon. Johnny has a bachelor's degree in public policy, and believes that the message should always be more important than the messenger. #LegalizeIt #FreeThePlant

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